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STRAMGT 359

Aligning Start-ups with their Market

Graduate School of Business

Recommended for route(s):

[ Transactional ] Business Law: Finance: Banking & Bankruptcy

Why it is relevant for ...

[ Transactional ] as a Relevant Course outside SLS for those interested in Marketing : Students interested in becoming transactional attorneys may want to take 1 or more courses on marketing to better understand some of the strategic and tactical marketing decisions faced by businesses. A number of courses focus on marketing strategy and the elements of marketing analysis: product strategy, pricing, advertising and promotion, and distribution.

General course
Description:

Most everyone associated with technology start-ups would agree that the most important initial characteristic of a successful endeavor is a compelling vision. The journey from vision to escape velocity is highly dependent on management's ability to translate that vision into a product or service that closely and economically addresses a customer's significant point of pain. Without a tight product market fit, the start-up's offering will not be able to break through the market's gravitational forces which strongly favor existing solutions, resulting in likely failure. With tight product/market fit, it is far more likely the company will achieve repeatable and growing sales success. Conventional wisdom dictates that a start-up launching a new product should focus its energy understanding what the market wants (problem) and then translating that knowledge into an optimal set of product features (solution). This is the ideal strategy if one is attacking a market that already exists. However if the start-up pursues an entirely new market or re-segments an existing market, customers are unlikely to be able to articulate the benefits and features they will need. The approaches required to pursue new or re-segmented markets are radically different from those applied to existing markets. As a result it is not relentless execution and exploitation of a well understood market that will lead to success, but discovery of a new market or segment that is in need of the product as envisioned. If done well, this process of finding the optimal product/market fit has a disproportionate impact on success. Our intention is to create a course that explores the many issues associated with optimizing product/market fit. Two group papers comprise 50% of a student's grade with class participation representing the remainder. STRAMGT 353 is recommended prior to taking this course.

Course Style: A Substantive course teaches the law, theory, and policy in a particular area of law